On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 9:33 AM, "F" wrote:

Yada, here is the link to Nehemia Gordon's biblical explanation and what he call teaching. Do you think this is an opportunity to share what we know?
"F"

http://www.makorhebrew.org/love_mug.shtml

F,

I quickly read the link you sent me. Here are my thoughts:

Other than rabbinical corruption for the purpose of removing God's name from everything, there is no basis for Yeh. And Yeshu/Yeshua is based on an acronym specifically designed to remove Yahushua's actual name from the people's minds and lips. To use them suggests that Nehemia Gordon is either teaching without sufficient knowledge or that he has been overly influenced by rabbinical Judaism.

There are many very well researched articles on the proper vocalization of the Hebrew vowel consonants. If you think this fellow is open to the truth, I'd share some of those with him. While Yada Yahweh discusses the proper pronunciation of Yahuweh's name, that isn't the primary focus of the book, and frankly, this singular topic is hard to find in the midst of the 1500 pages of amplified translation and commentary.

Yes, we are to love our neighbor and Yahuweh (as the Love Mug suggests), but instructions to do so should present God's name as accurately as is possible. Moreover, I wouldn't put such a message on a coffee mug or sell it to support a ministry. Further, loving one's neighbor, while vitally important, doesn't encapsulate Scripture's message. In the OC, it didn't make Yah's top ten list. In the RC, in context, neighbor is usually tied to Yah's family, and thus is directly tied to knowing and loving God.

Nehemia Gordon may have lost site of who is trustworthy and who is not. Rabbi Akiva, whom he cites as a great sage, was anti Yahuweh and anti Yahushua. He was the founder of rabbinical Judaism. His creation of a false Messiah was the reason Jews were expelled from the land for nearly 2,000 years. Rabbi Akiva 's entire mission in life was to usurp God's authority.

NG is wrong in saying that "Hebrew was Yeshua's native tongue." He spoke Aramaic. He was wrong in his citation of the Mishnah as if it were useful in understanding Yah's testimony. And he was wrong in suggesting that the rabbinical list of Sabbath requirements may have been appropriate.

If this man can be reached, buy Gordon a copy of Rabbi Akiva's Messiah so that he might refrain from using this evil man's words in relation to God. And send him some of the better links on the subject of Yahuweh's name. While I don't know him, based on what I read, the evidence won't persuade him.


Yada

I'm ccing the YY forum on this in hopes the discussion is helpful to others.

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 9:55 AM, "F" wrote:

OH BOY are we having fun now.

What do you think about Nehemia Gordon's explanation of how to pronounce Yahuweh in this letter.

Take a read and lets see if we can help push him in the river of Yah.

-F

----- Original Message -----
From: ngordon4
To: karaite_korner_news
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 9:09 AM
Subject: [Karaite Korner Newsletter] #343: Paleo-Yahweh


Karaite Korner Newsletter #343

Paleo-Yahweh

One of the great puzzles of our times is the correct pronunciation of
the name of our heavenly Father YHVH. Many scholars insist the true
name is Yahweh but the Anchor Bible Dictionary admits this is nothing
more than a "scholarly guess". Most investigators dismiss the form
Yehovah even though it has been preserved in the Masoretic text, the
Hebrew version of the Tanach accepted by all Jews throughout the
world. It is usually argued that Yehovah is nothing more than the name
YHVH with the vowels of Adonai. But in reality YHVH with the vowels of
Adonai (A-O-A) would be Yahovah not Yehovah (the "i" at the end of
Adonai is not a vowel in Hebrew).

Recently I was presented with a novel theory that the true name is
Yahuwah. The proof for this theory, I was told, is that this is how
the name was pronounced in "Paleo-Hebrew". For those not familiar with
this term, the Paleo-Hebrew script is the earliest known form of the
Hebrew alphabet. When the Jews came back from Babylonia around 516 BCE
they gradually began to replace Paleo-Hebrew with the Aramaic script.
By the 3rd century BCE Paleo-Hebrew was only used for Torah scrolls
and most day-to-day writing took place in the Aramaic script. Hebrew
writing to this day still uses a form of that Aramaic script.

Paleo-Hebrew appears as late as 135 CE on Jewish coins, but other than
this ceremonial use it all but disappeared. By the 3rd century CE
Paleo-Hebrew was but a distant cultural memory and the Rabbis were no
longer even sure whether the Paleo-Hebrew or the Aramaic script was
the original Hebrew alphabet. The Babylonian Talmud contains an almost
comical discussion in which the Rabbis debate this very question. In
the Talmudic, the Aramaic script is called "Assyrian Script" and
Paleo-Hebrew is called "Hebrew Script". The names of these two
scripts, "Assyrian" and "Hebrew" should have been a clue as to which
was the original Hebrew writing system. Nevertheless the Rabbis
concluded in their profound wisdom that Moses actually wrote the Torah
in the Assyrian script!

It would be another 1000 years until Paleo-Hebrew was rediscovered. In
1267 a Rabbi named Moses ben Nachman or "Nachmanides" was banished
from Spain for defending the Jewish faith. Nachmanides made his way to
the Land of Israel eventually settling in Jerusalem where he came
across an ancient Jewish coin inscribed with strange letters. With the
help of a Samaritan, Nachmanides was able to decipher the coin and
discovered that the strange script was none other than Paleo-Hebrew.
Despite the Talmud's conclusion about the Assyrian script being older,
Nachmanides theorized that Paleo-Hebrew was in fact the original
Hebrew writing system. His theory was confirmed in the 19th century
when archaeologists began to find Hebrew inscriptions from First
Temple times all of which were written in Paleo-Hebrew.

Paleo-Hebrew is not a language, it is a "script". Even when Hebrew was
written out in the Aramaic script, it was the still Hebrew not
Aramaic. In theory one could write out any language in the script of
another language without changing the meaning. For example, I could
write, "hakalbah sheli meod yafah". Even though these four words are
written out in English script, they are still Hebrew words. Of course,
the problem with writing out Hebrew words in English script is that
English does not have all of the sounds that exist in Hebrew. However,
when the Jews returned from Babylonian it was relatively easy for them
to replace Paleo-Hebrew with the Aramaic script because both have the
same twenty-two letters. This is because historically-speaking the
Aramaic script itself developed out of the Paleo-Hebrew script. In
modern terms we can think of the Aramaic script as a Hebrew "font"
based on the original Hebrew alphabet. The fact that Paleo-Hebrew is
original can be seen in the names of the letters. For example, in both
Hebrew and Aramaic, the first letter of the alphabet is called "aleph"
which literally means "ox". But in Paleo-Hebrew the aleph actually
looks like an ox whereas in the Aramaic script it does not.

Even though the Torah was originally written in the Paleo-Hebrew
script, changing it to the Aramaic script did not change the meaning
of a single word nor did it change the pronunciation of a single
letter. This is analogous to taking an old English book printed in a
Gothic font and re-printing it in a modern English font. The words
would have the same meaning and the change in font would not affect
how the words are pronounced. Because Paleo-Hebrew is simply a Hebrew
font (albeit the original one), there is no such thing as a
"Paleo-Hebrew pronunciation". The name YHVH was not "pronounced" in
Paleo-Hebrew it was "written" in Paleo-Hebrew. Now there may be some
historical question as to how Hebrew was originally pronounced, but
this has nothing to do with the script used.

When it comes to the pronunciation of any ancient language there is
always a degree of uncertainty. No one has an audio recording of how
the ancient Israelites spoke so the only source for Hebrew
pronunciation is the living linguistic tradition preserved by the
Jewish people. The problem is that different Jewish communities
throughout the world pronounce Hebrew differently. For example, some
Jewish communities traditionally pronounce the Hebrew letter vav as V
while others pronounce it as W. There is no way to know which of these
pronunciations is more original and in fact it is possible that both
are original! We know that there were different dialects of ancient
Hebrew with vastly different pronunciations. The book of Judges tells
the story of the battle between Jephthah and the Ephraimites.
According to Judges 12:6 Jephthah's men were able to identify the
fleeing Ephraimite soldiers based on their unique pronunciation of
Hebrew. It is very possible that the different pronunciations of
Hebrew by Jewish communities throughout the world preserve different
dialects of Hebrew. This means that some ancient Israelites may have
said V while others said W.

Some of those searching for the original pronunciation of the name
YHVH cite evidence from ancient Akkadian inscriptions. If there is
doubt about the original pronunciation of Hebrew, the doubt is a
hundred-fold when it comes to ancient Akkadian. While Hebrew survived
as a ceremonial language among the Jewish people, Akkadian was
completely forgotten for 2000 years. Akkadian was deciphered in the
19th century but the precise pronunciation has never been anything
more than pure conjecture based on similarities the language has to
Hebrew, Arabic, and other Semitic languages.

Using ancient Greek as a source for the pronunciation of the Name is
not much better than using Akkadian. There are no less than three
surviving pronunciation traditions for ancient Greek. To make matters
worse, the ancient Greeks themselves undoubtedly had trouble
pronouncing Hebrew words. When it came to Hebrew, the Greeks were
"foreigners" and they totally botched the language as can be seen from
the hundreds of Hebrew names written out in Greek letters in the
Septuagint. For example, the Greeks Septuagint writes out the Hebrew
name "Moshe" as "Mo-u-ses". The name YHVH must have been particularly
difficult because ancient Greek did not have consonants equivalent to
Y, H, or V/W which make up the name YHVH. It was a lost cause for the
Greeks to pronounce the name YHVH the way an Israelite would.

From the evidence I have seen the most reliable source is still the
Masoretic text which preserves the authentic Hebrew version of the
Tanakh. But at the end of the day, there is some degree of uncertainty
and we should not be dogmatic about something for which there is
uncertainty. Whether one pronounces the name as Yehovah, Yahweh, or
Yihweh it seems to me that it is the intention that matters. Our
heavenly Father knows that when we call on his name, whether we
pronounce it correctly or not, that we are calling upon him. As far as
I am concerned, it makes no difference whether you say potayto or
potahto as long as you do not say "spud"!

NG
Jerusalem, Israel

F,

I read about half of this and gave up. There were too many errors and too much irrelevant material. If I'm going to study the proper pronunciation of Hebrew names and words, I'm going to read something from someone smarter than this fellow.

The oo or u sound of the Hebrew W is so pervasive throughout the Hebrew language it removes any reasonable doubt as to its vocalization. In paleo Hebrew, like English today, the Y and W were vowel consonants. And in paleo-Hebrew, the soft H was also a vowel consonant representing either the eh or ah sound. There is no part of this which is peculiar to Yahuweh's name. So to say that it is a puzzle to ascertain the proper pronunciation of YHWH is to say that every Hebrew word, title, and name is a puzzle to speak.

The simple truth is, religious people want it confusing and unknown so that they continue can continue to put themselves between God and man.

Yada